INTRODUCTION

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the study of negotiation as a discourse in its own right from both cross- and inter-cultural perspectives. Humour is also a well-established field of study, and it has long been recognised not only that what counts as a joke may be culturally specific but that the sequencing and patterning of laughter may also vary in terms of cross-cultural pragmatics. The aim of this chapter is to contrast joking exchanges produced in Spanish and Danish negotiations in terms of the different priorities given to different kinds of face-work in Spanish and Danish business cultures. Joking is seen as a multiple communicative act whose function is to relieve tension in double-bind situations. This seems to hold true both in Spanish and Danish joking contexts. The way in which joking strategies are built up, however, follows different patterns. In order to analyse these different joking strategies as they are employed in negotiation, it is useful first of all to examine the relationship between joker, butt and audience, and, secondly, to explore how joking and laughter relate to the sequencing and structure of ‘talk’ in business contexts.

DATA

The negotiators who are included in this data were young business executives in Spain and Denmark, all of whom had previous negotiation experience, and had attended training courses to improve their negotiation skills. The training consisted of five-day courses arranged in Spain and Denmark by professionals in training centres. The training programmes in both countries were virtually identical, including the content of the simulation exercise that has been used for the present analysis. In other words, the data represents as far as possible, in a non-laboratory situation, a series of constants and one variable, i.e., the negotiator's cultural background. A small group of researchers, including the author, attended the courses as observers and videotaped simulated negotiation exercises with the understanding that these were to be used for purposes of linguistic analysis only.

The primary issue to be negotiated in the simulation exercise used as the basis of the present analysis concerns the sale of a fishing boat. The selling party consists of a businessman and his wife, who also own a fish restaurant and have a son who has just left college.